NU's history with Texas recruits since 1950

[Nexus]

Came across a tweet from a UT fan saying it'd be a mistake for OU to leave for Pac-12 because it'd affect their Texas recruiting base. I chuckled at the comment thinking: "WTH? They border your state. They'll continue to pull quality recruits from Texas regardless of conference affiliation." This prompted me to do some research on our history with Texas recruiting since 1950. Why 1950? Because the first place I began researching was letter winners and the '50s were the first evidence of Texas players showing up. Then I went further and researched award winners which included All-American (1st, 2nd, 3rd team), All-Conference (1st, 2nd, 3rd team) and National Award Winners (Heisman, Lombardi, etc.). Here's the numerical breakdown:

1950s - 3 letter winners

1960s - 4 letter winners

1970s - 10 letter winners

1980s - 22 letter winners

1990-1995 (Big 8 era) - 17 letter winners

1996-2010 (Big 12 era) - 35 letter winners

1950-1995 (Big 8 era) – 56 total letter winners, 19 All-Americans/All-Conference, 1 National Award Winner = Roughly 1.2 Texas recruits per year for 46 years with 34% of them being award winners.

1996-2010 (Big 12 era) – 35 total letter winners, 1 All-American/All-Conference = Roughly 2.3 Texas recruits per year for 15 years with 1 award winner or 0.02%.

You can pretty much draw your own conclusions from these numbers by comparing the Big 8 era to the Big 12 era. Note that while we accumulated more in quantity of Texas recruits by average during the Big 12 era, the quality of those recruits was lacking as evidenced by the low number of AA/AC winners. Obviously we also have to factor in the quality of coaching and coaching changes impacting those numbers during the Big 8 & Big 12 eras. On top of that, you're bound to get more player awards in an 8-team conference vs. a 12-team conference.

As you can see, NU did better when Texas wasn't in the same conference. It'd be nice if history could repeat itself for NU during the Pelini/B1G era as it did for Devaney-Osborne/Big 8 era in terms of quality Texas recruits. I realize college football is quite different today than it was 40 years ago particularly with more in-depth media exposure which makes competing for recruits that much harder.

 

[dylan]

you're right to point out that it's a different world in recruiting these days, but your overall point is dead on. oklahoma and (to a lesser extent) NU were recruiting successfully in texas long before being in a league with them. both will continue to do so. it's just a bogeyman texas throws out there to bully conference rivals (and try to influence media and recruits).

 

[Nexus]

you're right to point out that it's a different world in recruiting these days, but your overall point is dead on. oklahoma and (to a lesser extent) NU were recruiting successfully in texas long before being in a league with them. both will continue to do so. it's just a bogeyman texas throws out there to bully conference rivals (and try to influence media and recruits).

I'll be content with averaging 1 Texas recruit per year like the old Big 8 days. So long as they're getting quality coaching and helping us win lots of games in the process, then it might be worth losing that extra Texas recruit or two per year that we otherwise would've gotten as Big 12 members. At NU, we've always had to do more with less anyway. Just find a way to win and the rest will take care of itself.